Yesterday I listened to a podcast on which Bill Gurley was interviewed. Bill is a partner at Benchmark, a highly regarded West Coast venture capital firm that made early investments in companies like eBay, Uber, Instagram, Zillow, and Snapchat. It’s in the top tier of U.S. venture firms because of its outsize returns to investors.

Bill has been a technology investor for many years. He experienced the dot-com bust and the financial crisis. On the podcast, he shared what he learned from previous downturns: “the best way to protect against the downside is to enjoy every last bit of the upside.” I was surprised. To summarize his explanation, he said that the biggest returns usually come from investments made at the very end of a cycle. If you pull back too early because you’re anticipating a downturn, you’ll miss the best investment opportunities. He didn’t say this, but I assume he thinks that timing a downturn is nearly impossible so people should stay the course until the downturn happens.

Bill is embracing the current reality. He’s accepting his situation and investing accordingly until trends turn and there’s a new reality.

I’ve thought about this and debated with others it over the last day, and I think Bill makes a good argument. Accepting (rather than fighting) a trend positions you to take advantage of whatever opportunities it presents. So what if you don’t like the trend? The trend doesn’t care. If you fight it because you think it’s wrong, you don’t understand it, or you think it will (should) change, you’ll miss out.

This isn’t applicable to everyone or to all situations, but it’s an interesting perspective and food for thought from a wise and experienced investor.

Last year I observed something about small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that got me thinking. Consumers communicate with each other differently than they do with SMBs. They text, FaceTime, and direct message via Instagram, Twitter, and many others all day long. Yet they call, email, or physically visit SMBs. Thinking this was a problem, I did some research. What I learned was that it wasn’t a problem. Customers weren’t asking for different communication methods and SMBs were growing, so they didn’t need to change. In hindsight, it might have been a timing thing. I might have been too early.

The world is different now. Consumers are hesitant to visit physical locations. They’re stuck at home trying to work, watch their kids, and do a host of other things. They’re adapting to a different way of living and searching for new ways to safely satisfy their needs and desires. This changing landscape has caused many SMBs to lose customers. They’re trying to offer the same products and services they always have in ways consumers are comfortable with, but they’re struggling to connect with consumers in this new world. SMBs are facing serious challenges and a massive shift in consumer behavior.

I see an opportunity in the midst of this turmoil. What about a platform through which an SMB and its customers could communicate in ways that resonate more with consumers now? Convenient, effective communication would attract customers. What if you could text the grocery store a picture of the orange juice you want to add to your delivery order? What if you could receive a 10-second video from the UPS driver showing where he put your package? What if you could talk to Alexa or Siri to place a dinner order for delivery?

I’m not sure how difficult it would be to build this platform or how it would work. But I think there’s an opportunity to improve how SMBs communicate with customers. Wouldn’t it be nice to rebuild the connection that’s been taken away?

I’ve been working with an entrepreneur for two months. She’s a developer with an app idea who could never find time to create an MVP to test her idea. We settled on a weekly cadence: she would email a group of advisors about her progress and ask for assistance if she needed it. The plan was simple but gave her the encouragement and accountability she needed to execute on her idea.

All was well for the first six weeks. In week seven, the pandemic affected her personally. She wasn’t able to focus and stopped sending the updates. She had stopped working on her app altogether. This was a huge red flag to me.

After hearing about everything she was juggling and her desire to make the app a reality, I made a recommendation: focus on one thing you can accomplish in a day or two. It doesn’t matter how small it is—it can be anything that moves you closer to your goal. Repeat every few days. The idea was that she could continue making progress while dealing with other responsibilities, and she’d have wins she could celebrate.

Sometimes even the best plans go awry. Life happens. It’s just the way the world works. At CCAW, there were many times when I felt like everything was going wrong at once. It was paralyzing and discouraging. Over time, I learned a few things:

• Focus on what you can control. Don’t dwell on things outside your control.
• Figure out how to keep making some kind of progress in small chunks. Celebrating small wins can change your perspective and give you a much-needed spark.
• Talk to credible people about what you’re experiencing. Keeping your feelings bottled up isn’t healthy. You’ll find that other people have been through similar things and can convince you there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
• No success story is up and to the right all the time. There’s always a period of struggle. This too shall pass.

The next time life prevents you from accomplishing your goals, find one small thing you can do quickly. And do it again in a day or two. Small wins will help you weather the storm!

Lately I’ve been looking for ways to have more efficient meetings. Especially with new entrepreneurs. I’m spending half our time trying to understand what problem they’re solving and how their product or service solves it.

At CCAW, I held weekly one-on-one meetings with direct reports. My days were full, so I kept them to a strict 30 minutes. I spent most of that time peeling back layers and asking questions that would get the other person to reflect on what they wanted to talk about. That meant that the meeting was almost over before I understood what we should be talking about. In the end, the meetings were of little value.

Over time, I started using software to help. The day before each meeting, the software prompted my direct reports to answer these questions:

1. What have you accomplished since the last time we met?
2. What roadblocks have you encountered since we last met?
3. What do you plan to accomplish before our next meeting?
4. What are you most worried about today?

If they didn’t answer them, we wouldn’t meet.

This was powerful. Their preparation made our meetings more effective. They could see their previous responses, including what they’d committed to being responsible for. Formulating their answers required reflection and planning and instilled accountability. All of this made our meetings richer.

My own preparation was equally as helpful. I reviewed the answers beforehand. I compared actual accomplishments to planned accomplishments and made a point of discussing gaps. I set expectations and helped my people prioritize. I learned about challenges early and was usually able to address them before they turned into bigger issues. I went into each meeting ready to discuss the things that mattered most to that person and to CCAW’s objectives. The tone of my meetings changed, and people looked forward to them.

Consider preparing for your meetings more effectively and asking or requiring (depending on the context) the other person to do so too. Your meetings will be more productive and helpful.

I’ve always been in the habit of asking myself a question: am I doing what I need to be doing? Lately, I’ve struggled to answer it. I usually compare what I’m doing today to what’s worked for me in the past. In recent months, I’ve compared what I’m doing today to what I did before COVID-19. I lifted weights four or five days a week to release stress and stay healthy. I traveled by plane every few weeks to maintain existing relationships and build new ones. I went to the office every day to focus on work. I ate out often because I was busy.

When the past is my baseline, the answer is no, I’m not doing what I need to be doing. It’s not that I don’t want to do these activities. I do, but I’m just not comfortable doing them in this environment. That got me thinking about my approach. Should the past be my baseline?

The world has changed so much over the last few months. Many things that were commonplace aren’t viable today. I decided that using a comparison that isn’t feasible doesn’t make sense. In fact, I think it’s unhealthy.

I’ve started to ask myself a different question: am I doing what I need to be doing in the current environment? I no longer use the past as a baseline. What matters is whether I’m getting what I need in the best way possible given the current reality. For example, I need to relieve stress and stay healthy. I’m not comfortable going to the gym, so weightlifting is out. Instead, I’m running outside. Well, it rains pretty often, so I don’t consistently run four or five days a week. Two or three days is more realistic. Since I’m not as active, I now eat home-cooked meals to keep calories down (take-out is full of them!).

Is running two or three days a week what I’m used to? No. Does it give me the same results as my old workout? No. Are running and eating home-cooked meals what I need to be doing now to stay healthy and relieve stress? Yes.

I realized that benchmarking my life against the past was doing myself a disservice. I couldn’t fully embrace the present—which, after all, is all I’ve got—because a part of me was always holding on to the past.

Next time you’re grading yourself, consider thinking about what you need now, in today’s circumstances. You may realize you’ve been shortchanging yourself.

I met with an entrepreneur who is building a platform to help artists master and engineer their tracks. Automation will reduce their production time and costs so they can release more music. The platform leverages data science to make the automation possible.

I was intrigued as he explained the problem facing artists and how his platform will address it. I enjoy music as a consumer but have zero experience in the creative or business side of the industry. I have a high-level understanding of data science but zero experience applying it. I would have never thought to put the two together to solve a problem.

This entrepreneur has experience in both areas, which is rare. He’s been a musician since childhood. He’s passionate about it and has over a decade of learning under his belt. He’s worked in data science roles at start-ups alongside PhDs in data science. That experience taught him the power and capabilities of data science. His passion and experience allowed him to recognize how seemingly unrelated disciplines could be combined to create something wonderful.

This entrepreneur is in a great position. His experience puts him ahead of anyone else who has a similar idea; he’ll be able to move much faster. His passion will motivate him and push the platform to the finish line. The two together give him an unfair advantage that greatly increases his chances of success.

If you’re thinking about entrepreneurship, consider: What are you passionate about? What do you have experience doing? Can you put the two together? Identifying your unfair advantage could put you on a path to great success!

I’ve been asked a few times to name one game-changing thing I did to help myself. Easy question: I sought out people MUCH smarter than I who were directionally aligned with me. This changed my trajectory, and it’s something most people can do.

Directional alignment was key, and it required me to think about where I want to be in 10, 15, and 20 years. I didn’t get granular and say I want to be at X place by Y date; I kept it high-level. When I was thinking of leaving corporate America, I decided I wanted to build a company and be an entrepreneur. I didn’t want to be shady or exploitative. I wanted to be successful while treating others the way I wanted to be treated. Super high-level; clear direction.

Once I knew where I was headed, I looked for groups of people smarter than I was. Some, like EO, were formal. Others were informal. I’ll admit this was tough to do. I was very uncomfortable when I first interacted with these groups. I was used to being at the top of my game. I’d done well in school and ranked high among my peers in the corporate world. I soon learned how big my knowledge gap was!

I was inexperienced and embarrassed when I couldn’t answer questions about topics that were basic in these circles. I often had no idea what they were talking about and experienced imposter syndrome. I powered through it, though. I noted things I was unfamiliar with and Googled them later. I had one-off conversations with people to dive deeper into specific topics. I eventually realized that when I was uncomfortable, it meant I was learning. Over time I became comfortable being uncomfortable.

Smart people introduced me to many new things and better ways of doing old things. Over time, I formed great relationships with many of them. Looking back, I see how critical my decision was. These groups helped fill my knowledge and relationship gaps, which gave me more opportunities to be successful.

I once listened to a founding executive of a publicly traded Atlanta company speak. Bob helped scale the company from a five-man team to an IPO with thousands of employees. He was sharp and reminded me of a startup founder. He always believed the impossible was possible. When asked what the secret to his company’s success was, Bob said his team didn’t blindly trust anybody or anything. Their motto: “prove it.”

As it scaled to an enterprise-size organization, his company was pitched tons of products and services. Often, when he asked why ABC product or XYZ service was the best, the answer was, “All the big companies are using it.” This never made any sense to him. His team learned to give that rationale zero weight. They tested everything to find out for themselves if it was the best. Often, they found that big companies were not using the best—far from it. They’d find competitors with superior offerings. And knowing the shortcomings of other companies gave them insights on how to differentiate themselves to customers.

This approach ultimately produced their competitive edge. Bob and his team did the tedious grunt work of vetting everything that underpinned their technology. Their competitors had chosen the lazy way, piggybacking on big companies’ decisions. Over time, using the best of the best made Bob’s company’s platform lightning fast. Once customers discovered how fast it was, the company developed a cult following.

My big takeaway from his story was to trust but verify. You can’t lean on someone else all the time. You have to dig in and put in the time yourself.

I spent over a decade building CCAW. The journey was pretty crazy—filled with extreme highs and lows. I didn’t realize the value in taking time away. I worked five years straight before taking a one-week vacation and around eight or nine years before taking a two-week one. It took people close to me encouraging me to take time off and feeling mentally and physically exhausted.

On vacation, I didn’t look at work unless it was an absolute emergency. I made sure to communicate this to the team to set expectations.

I hadn’t realized how wound up I was. Time away brought this into focus. I worked out regularly, so I had a physical release, but this was mental. It took me longer than it should have to relax and enjoy my downtime. Working on something intensely for so long had slowly changed my mental state and I hadn’t realized it. Time away let me reset mentally and relax.

It’s common knowledge in my entrepreneurial circles that sleep is a challenge. A fair number of us don’t sleep soundly because our minds are racing. Waking in the middle of the night becomes the norm. We learn to function on suboptimal sleep. I slept much better on vacation, recharging mentally and physically.

I come up with many of my best ideas and solutions to nagging problems when I’m away from the business (like some people say they do in the shower!). I’ll be thinking about something else and an idea will pop into my head. I jot it down so I won’t keep thinking about it. Over the years I’ve noticed that when I get things out of my head, my subconscious mind uses the bandwidth in creative ways.

My experiences with time away are probably extreme, but I share them so others can learn from them. You may think there’s no good time to be away from your business, but sometimes that’s exactly what you and the business need.

I hope everyone enjoyed their downtime this holiday weekend!

When I’m passionate about an idea, my mind races. I think of ways to maximize the potential I see. I visualize the idea as a success. I’m mentally at the finish line before I’ve even started running the race. I see how it can add value to customers’ lives, how it will run, how many people are needed, what those people will do, and on and on. Then I have to tell myself, whoa. It takes time to get to the finish line. The idea will get there, but not on day one. When it does, it might not look exactly like my vision.

When an idea has great potential, I want it to be realized immediately. Unfortunately, things don’t work that way. After a decade-plus as an entrepreneur, I still have to remind myself of that. It takes time to learn what your customers want, develop what they’ll actually pay for, build a team, and work through the unexpected kinks.

Most worthwhile businesses didn’t start off anywhere close to where they ended up. Netflix began by shipping DVDs. Now it has a huge digital content library and creates original movies and shows—all delivered digitally over the internet. Amazon started off selling and shipping books. Now it creates movies and TV shows, owns a grocery store, and sells computing power to companies of all sizes. Oh . . . and it’ll sell you anything you can think of and deliver it in two days. Facebook got its start connecting college students over the internet. No one had any idea how or when it would make money. Now it generates $70 billion in annual advertising revenue, runs a social network that connects the world, helps people share images via Instagram, and offers free cross-border mobile communication via WhatsApp. These are extreme examples, but you get my point.

Greatness doesn’t materialize on day one. It develops over time and the journey is a valuable part of the process. Things that weren’t obvious at the outset are discovered along the way and help inform where you end up.

The next time you’re excited about a great idea with lots of potential, savor the feeling and look forward to the ride!